Why is There so Much Violence in the Media?
I can hardly stand to watch the TV any more. Even just surfing channels I am confronted with so many scenes of violence it almost makes me ill. I know bad things happen to people every day. Still, what is the point of showing me all these problems? Am I supposed to feel bad all the time because there is violence and war in the world? I’m not a law enforcement person who would go around catching killers. Show your violent pictures to somebody else.
It goes right through from the news to entertainment. You can hardly watch a movie without somebody getting killed in the show. Is violence entertaining? Do you like to watch people bleed? I think even the Romans with their gladiators and arenas would get sick from watching American TV. How can people stand to see such horrible things all the time?
I can flip through a hundred channels on the tube and get 90 of them where something bad is happening to somebody. You’ve got news channels where there is nothing but crime 24/7. They have fight shows where men beat the crap out of each other while people cheer them on. Has the world gone insane? You watch even the science programs and half of them are about either dead people or they are about some disaster where people are getting hurt. It is the constant theme of mass media: violence. What kind of a twisted person would be entertained by a show about murderers? Yet there are dozens of these programs.
It’s not just television. It’s the whole entertainment industry. Movies, video games, books, magazines, most seem to have some kind of violent element to them. Is it some kind of conspiracy by our leaders to make humans desensitized to violence so we won’t object when they tell us to go out and kill Iraqis? I wonder sometimes. Why does every program that is supposed to be about science always end up using explosives to wreck something? It’s idiotic. Nobody wants a life full of violence, hate and death, yet we entertain ourselves by watching this nonsense? I just don’t know about people.
Maybe people are just naturally attracted to violence. Humans used to have to perpetrate violence on animals in order to get food. Still, if you want people to live peacefully you do not constantly bombard them with violent imagery. Is the entertainment industry trying to make me happy by showing me people getting hurt? That’s just idiotic. Anyone with a shred of empathy would feel lousy if they saw people suffering. Are they trying to make me depressed? I wonder sometimes. What is the point of a society that focuses so much on the bad things that happen and totally ignores the good that is done every day?
